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Graphs often compress a great deal of information into a simple visualizable structure. So it is not uncommon that vertex labels include more information than a simple index. For example, vertex labels might be lists. Graph handles this brilliantly:

graph = Graph[{{1, 2} \[DirectedEdge] {1, 3}, {1, 3} \[DirectedEdge] {2, 3}, {2, 3} \[DirectedEdge] {3, 2}, {3, 2} \[DirectedEdge] {1, 2}}, VertexLabels -> "Name"]

Nicely yields the graph

A directed graph with vertices given as lists

The issue here is EdgeContract. It does not seem to operate on such graphs. For example:

EdgeContract[graph, First[EdgeList[graph]]]

returns exactly the same graph. It does not contract the first edge.

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    $\begingroup$ Did you contact Wolfram to report this bug? If not, please do so. $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 25, 2021 at 17:36
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ Not fixed in 13.0 Prerelease 1. 13.0.0 for Mac OS X x86 (64-bit) (October 11, 2021). $\endgroup$ Commented Oct 25, 2021 at 19:12
  • $\begingroup$ Now fixed in Version 13.2 for Microsoft Windows (64-bit). $\endgroup$ Commented Apr 8, 2023 at 2:27

1 Answer 1

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One work-around is to covert the vertex names into strings:

sgraph = Graph[Map[ToString[First[#]] \[DirectedEdge] ToString[Last[#]] &, EdgeList[graph]], VertexLabels -> "Name"]

(I'm sure someone has a more elegant method for doing this) That produces the same graph but with the vertex names as strings instead of lists.

Now EdgeContract works:

EdgeContract[sgraph, First[EdgeList[sgraph]]]

correctly yields:

Directed graph with the first edge contracted

I suppose another alternative is a dictionary that maps labels to their information. But wouldn't it be nice if this added step weren't required?

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